Durban.

Two weekends ago we made a trip to the city of Durban, which is right on the east coast. We began the day shopping at the marketplace, buying touristy things and gifts for our secret valentines. After the shopping excursion we headed to the beach for our second Indian Ocean experience, which was an adventure to say the least.




To back up to the week first, this past week was a fun one! I went on two art field trips one in Pietermaritzburg and one in Durban. We realized the second that we stepped off the bus that our art teacher means business when she walks through the city. Before the whole group was even off of the bus she booked it across two streets! We tried to run after her and ended up in the middle of an intersection with cars nearly hitting us. Every time I replay it in my head it makes me laugh because she truly has no concern for the group when she is walking around, she just takes off and it is our job to run after her. Both art galleries were pretty boring, not my style of art, but both were followed by coffee shops and desserts which is always nice. Other than the two art field trips it was a week filled with 8 hour classes and adventures to the pub/restaurant up the street and in the game reserve. I have gotten a group of girls to start doing this workout video with me called "Jillian Michaels 30 Day Shred" it is so much fun working out with a group of girls rather than alone!

While we were in Durban we spent the day at the beach swimming in the shark infested waters, and playing soccer and rugby on the beach. We saw a "sangoma" which is basically a witch doctor. It is part of the African tradition, the sangomas can communicate with the ancestors and do ritual healing practices some which are pretty crazy. A lot of them are very dark, demonic people and I am pretty sure that this particular one was among that genre. Two friends and I were walking past him and my friend Angie noticed that he had a gun in his side so we turned the other direction but I turned around and made eye contact with him. It's hard to explain the rest but his intense stare just felt heavy and evil and as I made eye contact with him he pulled his gun out and pointed it at me. I turned around expecting a bullet to hit me in the back, but it didn't and after we walked away we looked back and saw that he kept the gun out and was pretending to shoot groups of people walking by. It was very frightening. Somewhat an ironic experience given that we were going to visit a sangoma the next week in class. :)